Dear colleagues,

I hope you all had a great weekend and for those of you who enjoyed some downtime during the school holidays, welcome back. We start the week with just one new case of COVID-19 in Queensland, bringing the state’s total to three active cases, all of which have been acquired overseas and are subject to isolation or quarantine.

While we are certainly managing well in Queensland, the unfolding events in Victoria are a stark reminder that the COVID-19 pandemic is far from over. With the borders now open to anyone from states and territories other than Victoria, it remains important that we continue to follow the public health advice and take it seriously.

Today’s updates include:

• Changes to hospital visitor guidelines
• Crossroads Hotel COVID-19 warning
• Planning for response to Residential Aged Care Facilities

Changes to hospital visitor guidelines

The Hospital Visitors Direction has been recently amended to allow children as visitors and more than one visit per day for more than 2 hours.  The revised Direction allows a patient to receive up to two visitors any one time, with multiple visits allowed in any one day.  More than two visitors continue to be allowed to provide end-of-life support to a patient.

We know that support from family and friends is key to a patient’s recovery and wellbeing, so I understand this update must come as a big relief for our patients, visitors and staff.

Our visiting hours practices still remain in place, and we continue to encourage our patients to make use of virtual visits as much as possible.

Notwithstanding, we still need to take all reasonable steps to ensure that visitors to our services are well.  Visitors who are unwell are asked not to come to visit patients in our hospitals. Similarly, unless they have a Chief Health Officer exemption, visitors who are under an isolation or quarantine order are unable to visit our hospital patients. If you are concerned that a visitor is not following this Direction, please follow local escalation pathways.

All relevant documentation, websites and visiting promotional material will be updated on our COVID-19 website as soon as possible and sent to facility EOCs.

Crossroads Hotel COVID-19 warning

Yesterday, the Queensland Government issued a public health alert urging Queenslanders who visited NSW’s Crossroads Hotel between July 3 to July 10 to self-isolate immediately and get COVID-19 tested.

This comes after the busy hotel, located in the South Western Sydney suburb of Casula, recorded multiple COVID-19 cases. It is a popular stopover spot for many travellers, so I urge you to encourage anyone who visited the hotel to take action.

Planning for Response to Residential Aged Care Facilities

As part of our ongoing preparation, we are revising parts of our response to Residential Aged Care Facilities.  It is very likely that early in any escalation in response, we will be required to limit staff movement between Residential Aged Care Facilities. This would impact staff who work across more than one facility, whether that is a facility in Metro North or a private facility. We will be shortly doing some work to identify those that could be affected by this. If you could be affected, please discuss this with your supervisor so that we can work to develop plans and options should an escalation in our response be required.

In closing, I’d like to share with you some artwork created by a woman who recently completed her mandatory period of quarantine in Queensland. Nada, who was happy to share her name and artwork, drew a series of beautiful images while in quarantine as a way to thank the people who supported her wellbeing. Here’s just one of them.

Behind the scenes, there’s a huge operation comprising of contract tracers, public health officials, nurses, social workers, police and other community agencies working around the clock to manage and contain all active cases in the community, as well as provide support and care to those people undertaking quarantine, often alone and away from their usual supports. While the quarantine period has been a daunting experience for some, I think Nada’s artwork hints at the compassion and care shown by our health staff and other officials during an otherwise challenging time.

Enjoy the rest of your week.

Kind regards,

Dr Liz Rushbrook
Metro North Incident Commander

Metro North HHS – Overview of Cases*

*With effect 13 July 2020
**Metro North has three recorded deaths (one person a return traveller into NSW, who passed away in NSW)
*** These numbers reflect the cases being managed by Metro North.